Bits and Pieces

I hope you don't mind one of those bits and pieces posts.

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Thank you for your comments on fish and chips. It seems as if you are in agreement that chips shouldn't be a side order to a dinner where they are stated in the name. Oh well.

BTW, the chips in fish and chips are fries, not potato chips. Chips is the British worth for our fries, which somehow we have kept in naming this dish. Otherwise,we know them as fries. They aren't even called french fries anymore but just fries. Also to note in passing, what we do normally call chips here are known as crisps there.

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We went for a little walk in our little downtown yesterday and encountered very few people. Those few whom we did encounter were masked although we weren't. Sue can't stand wearing a mask, and while I do better than her, I don't want to be bothered trying to pull it off and on and up and down while wearing a hat and gloves on a cold day. What we did do when we did encounter those very few pedestrians was to drift off to the edge of the sidewalk and stand in place with our backs to them and the sidewalk until they passed by.

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The lockdown measures are having an effect as the new daily numbers have declined from >3000/day to <2000/day. It's still alarmingly high, though, and the province has also discovered its first incidence of the South African variant. They don't know, yet, how it got here.

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It was a cold and bright day but not quite so cold as the previous week. Dressed appropriately on a sunny and windless day, we were quite comfortable.

No matter how cold it gets, the river doesn't freeze here because it runs too fast.

However, I have seen photos from olden days where people were skating near the bridge (second photo). In those days, I think dams that existed on the other side of the bridge in those days would have calmed the flow, turning this part of the river more into a pond that would freeze.

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The chamber of commerce has asked me for copies of some of my photos for their publications. I will receive a small remuneration that might pay for my next order of fish and chips. lol

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We have, or will shortly have, a ton of Honeycrisp apples, for Danica and her stepmother brought us a box (see photo) of 8 (I think) from Costco. Meanwhile, I will pick up 7 today on our weekly grocery pickup. The order was locked in yesterday, too late to take the apples off the order. I am sure that they will all keep for two weeks.

These are our favourite apples which we can't get all year, or at least they get too over-the-top expensive come spring and summer. They are always expensive, but since we don't order chipless fish very often, we are willing to bear the cost up to a point. The apples in last order were large and effectively cost us $3 each. Yikes!

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Sue reads through audible books. I don't usually, but I saved Robert Galbraith's (aka JK Rowling) long read, Troubled Blood, for the dead of winter. It is now the dead of winter, so I have begun my listening. The reader (narrator) is fabulous. I sometimes used to read to Sue at bedtime, but now that she has talented narrators at hand , the bloom is off that particular rose. And my oral reading does not improve with age.

I have also stored Louise Penny's latest (I forget the name) for a deep winter, cozy read which I will get to after Blood. I see that her next book has been named and will be published later this year. She churns out one per year but, so far, has managed to keep the quality up fairly well.

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I have more miscellany that I could add, but I rather think that is enough for one day. Have a good one.